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Telephone reception is Sekesua and Akateng to be improved [Ghana News Agency]

(Ghana News Agency Via Acquire Media NewsEdge)
Sekesua (E/R), Aug 8, GNA - Sekesua and Akateng, two farming communities in the Upper Manya-Krobo District, are to benefit from the Rural Telephony Project targeted at underprivileged and deprived communities to help improve their telecommunication networks and reception.

The two communities have been listed among other communities across the country to benefit from the project.

This was contained in a statement released by government recently during a press briefing by Mr Felix Kwakye Ofosu then Deputy Minister for Information and Media Relations.

Under the Project, rural communities with population less than 200,000 are provided with 2G/3G base stations with small cellular antennae enabling internet Wi-Fi services that improves or provides telecommunication network and reception.

Sekesua and Akateng are commercial hubs of the Upper Manya-Krobo District and the whole region considering the huge markets in the two communities which are patronized by traders from all over the country, yet have telecommunications problems.

Akateng, a fishing community and a marketing center along the Volta Lake, has a vibrant market that attracts traders from Kumasi, Tema, Accra, Akosombo, Koforidua and Nkawkaw to buy farm produce mainly from some of the Islands on the Volta Lake.

The traders go to Akateng to buy goods like tilapia, charcoal, vegetables, groundnuts, beans, maize, yams, cattle, pigs, goats and sheep on market days which spread from Tuesday to Thursday every week.

Akateng serves as one of the major marketing center for many of the Islands in the Volta Lake.

Despite it's commercial importance, telephone reception is so bad in the area that people have to climb trees and move away about two kilometres to certain locations before they could make or receive calls, a situation which affects their trading businesses.

The GNA Media Auditing and Development Tracking Project Team sponsored by STAR-Ghana gathered that apart from MTN, no other network is available and even that was not stable.

The GNA Team gathered that sometimes for weeks, people in the Akateng community and its surroundings could not make or receive a calls. This aids armed robbers to take advantage of the situation to attack the traders since they could not make any call for help.

This also affects traders on the Islands because they are not able to contact their business partners to agree on prices and volumes of supply to be transported to the market
In the case of Sekesua, there is no network at all, telephone communication is not part of the live of the people.

When the GNA team visited the two communities and announced the government's intention to them, they were happy and urge government not to make it a lip service since several appeals on the issue had fallen on deaf ears.